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Overview

My passion is to start and lead for-profit companies that help contribute to the betterment of our increasingly smaller (and crowded) world.  I call myself a Social Venture (serial) Entrepreneur.

I’ve worked across many sectors of the economy and in academia.  Fresh out of college I was a policy-wonk for five years in the California State Legislature.  I’ve founded non-profit organizations and served on numerous of their boards.  And after attending the Harvard Business School (class of ’88), I have worked at BCG, founded a venture-backed dot.com, and created a financial services company (among other things).  I also teach entrepreneurship at Cal-Berkeley.

In most all of these jobs, my underlying motivation was to leave the world a little better off.  As Mahatma Ghandi said:  “We must become the change you want to see.” 

Right now I am fortunate to be on a “Family Sabbatical” in Argentina with my wife and two daughters.  After thirty years of professional work, we felt that it was “now or never” to realize a dream of living overseas.  We’re in our fourth month now (November 2008), and I highly recommend it – I’ve had more quality time with my family in Argentina then in the past decade!

Start-up History

revaIn terms of start-ups, I’ve had a pretty good run.  In the early ‘90’s I helped manage an electric car technology company (including being in charge of taking the company public).  We developed a plug-in EV that is in full-scale production in India, with over 1,600 vehicles on-the-road, including over 600 in England.  The vehicle was spun-out into a JV with an Indian manufacturing company.

In the late ‘90’s (after two other start-ups), I became a poster child for the the dot.com / dot.bomb era.  I was the founder and CEO of the venture-backed Petstore.com.  We were the first pet-tailer that was VC funded and we ramped from $0 to $1.4 million in monthly revenue and 300 employees in four months.  We sold to the Animal Planet folks when the space got crazy, and then were sold again to Pets.com.  I eventually got $15,000 from my stock, based on three cents per share.  Do the math, for awhile it was looking  pretty good when Pets.com stock was $14.00 per share, supposedly on its way to $40.00!

Blogging

I’ve certainly had my fair share of successes and failures in the start-up world.  Hopefully my blogging will help some of you increase your fun and success in the wild, wild west of the entrepreneurial world.

Interests

Politics, woodworking, mountain hiking and camping, spreadsheets, and spending time with my family.